Today I assembled the guitars I’ll be bringing for the Vintage Guitar Museum at the Guitar Geek Festival Show at Viva Las Vegas next weekend.
I hope that people enjoy the little museum I bring each year. But it’s really just a good excuse for me to dig through cases and find the most interesting guitars and things I think (hope?) that people will enjoy seeing.
Last year I was able to purchase both of Scotty Broyles’s mandolins: his 1938 Gibson mandolin and his 1952 Harvey electric mandolin (with the five-string Bigsby pickup). We’ll have a special corner dedicated to our old friend Scotty, along with a pair of boots and one of his 1950s cowboy hats that his kids sold me. Scotty Broyles forever, FTW!
We’ll also have the fabulous Honkytonk Wranglers from Kentucky appearing at Hillbillyfest, and Wyatt Miller, their guitarist, will also be participating in our tribute to Merle Travis at the Guitar Geek Festival Show.
With all this Kentucky music going on, I thought it would be cool to bring this guitar. This is a 1964 R.C. Allen guitar that was custom-made for Roy Lanham. If you’re not familiar with the name, Roy was from Corbin, Kentucky, but became one of the greatest guitarists who ever lived. His chord-melody Western swing jazz style was unmatched, and his jazzy leads can be heard on recordings with his group the Whippoorwills, as well as early King Records by people like Merle Travis, the Delmore Brothers, Grandpa Jones, and others. In the 1950s, he came to Los Angeles and became a top session musician. He played incredible, savage rockabilly guitar on sessions for Sage and Sand Records, records like “Yah! I’m Movin’” by Jimmy Patton, “Tuscaloosa Lucy” by Whitey Pullen, and “Never No More” by Wally and Don. He was the session guitarist on Loretta Lynn’s first single, “Honky Tonk Girl,” and he also played the beautiful chord-melody guitar on the Fleetwoods hit “Come Softly to Me.” For the last thirty years of his career, Roy played guitar for the Sons of the Pioneers.
Roy was mostly a Fender man; he was friends with Leo Fender, and Leo made him several customcolor instruments: a red 1957 Stratocaster, and later a red Jazzmaster, one of the first Jazzmasters made. I have heard it said that Roy Lanham was actually the “jazz master” that the guitar was named after, and if you heard Roy play jazz on a Jazzmaster, you’d understand why Leo was so enthralled with his playing.
In 1964, R.C. Allen made Roy this red guitar. It’s pretty much the standard electric guitar that R.C. was making during this era—the body reminiscent of the Harmony H64 body shape, but with Mosrite-style touches. A super-thin neck, flared D’Angelico style headstock. His homemade pickups have a Bigsby quality to them, and the Bigsby bridge and vibrato hammer that point home. (Note: the pickup covers are layers of black and white plexiglass—a neat technique that Semie Moseley sometimes used as well.)
R.C. used this guitar in the only advertisement that he ever took out during his long career—a small ad in the back of the 1964 Billboard World of Country Music yearbook.
I found the guitar, in poor shape and missing its bridge and tremolo, leaning in a pile of dust with no case at a famous Oklahoma guitar shop. Luckily I was able to convince the owner to sell it to me—it deserved a better fate. R.C.’s guitars vary in quality, but you can always tell the ones that he put a lot of extra work into. This is one of those. I’ll have it on display at my Vintage Guitar Museum at Viva Las Vegas next week! And three cheers for Kentucky music!
